Prosperity, peace, self-acceptance, self-knowledge, joyful sharing

What excites me about being affluent are the following:

having well-made sweaters

hiring people to clean the house, do the grocery shopping, prepare some meals, and do some of the garden/yard work

being able to maintain the house and property and handle any emergencies

being able to afford medical care--my choice--and medication

getting regular massages and chiropractic treatments

being able to buy whatever food I want (excepting dietary restrictions)

having more time for the things I enjoy (creative pursuits, animal activities, hiking, poetry, etc)

the ability to gift-buy freely

paying off debts and remaining debt free (ahhh, that feels good)

relieving friends in need and giving to organizations

owning a subaru station wagon

buying books freely

owning a larger home, including 20 acres and a barn for horses and a couple of goats

A truck and trailer for hauling livestock

being able to landscape/garden without restraint

Having an emergency fund and making regular investments so when I'm completely unable to work, I can still enjoy life and provide myself with comfort the medical care I will need til the end.


This is not a movie star's life, yet to me it seems equally fantastic from where I now sit. I need to get over the notion that it's fantastic and instead view it as already mine and be grateful for it every day, according to the Law of Attraction. I need to focus on the freedoms that are there: time for enjoyable pursuits because onerous chores are done by others, freedom from worry, freedom to buy books and thus to explore my interests thoroughly, freedom to give freely. More freedom, really, than I had earlier in my life or have now.

Even more of a stretch, I need to imagine the resources coming into my life that allow me to have this lifestyle. I need to imagine direct deposits large and small going into my checking account (even though I have no idea what for) and checks themselves, perhaps the swiping of credit cards, perhaps titles to property, brokerage statements showing the growth of my investments.

The "where from" of all this income is the most difficult part for me to imagine and I may have to leave that up to providence, Universal Mind, God, whatever. It's so unclear to me I can't even begin to imagine it. I am plotting a slow course to become a financial planner but I don't know if I will see it through or if it alone will bring me all of this.

An assumption of the employment mentality that I've always objected to is that the obligation to others is more important than the obligation to self. Though I've resisted it, I've also fallen for it in the sense that by avoiding full engagement in employment I've never had enough money to properly care for myself. Something of a catch-22. We seek income to be able to feed ourselves (at the most primitive level) but in return the employer wants most of the energy produced by that food. It strikes me as an uneven balance.

Along with the determination to do without to avoid "capture" by ceaseless, draining employment is a personality trait I call the Cult of Endurance, which includes valuing a faulty self-reliance ("since I can't afford to have someone else do it, I'll do it myself regardless of my ability"). I recognized this mentality and its destructiveness in my mid 30s, but recognizing something and unwrapping oneself from it are two different things. I keep getting caught up in it, especially by pushing my physical endurance and having difficulty facing that I'm unwell and simply can't function at the level I used to. Perhaps some day my health will improve but not via the cult of endurance. I'm having to give it up, to shed it, paradoxically, to keep going. I'm much more easily overwhelmed. 30hrs a week is working to capacity. I'm less tolerant of temperature changes. I have a greater need to feel physically safe. I must take daily medication and need to seek further medical help to get even better. I must coddle myself, in other words, which requires money. I really can't say, "Fine, I'll do without." I've become dependent and moving toward hothouse flower status.

This is quite an identity shift for me and not a positive one. I've felt it requires I become a part of a system or system(s) I dislike while at the same time being shut out from them (having too little money to make use of the health care system and the diminished work ability bumping me out of full time employment which would garner me benefits). The clearest challenge has been to enter a high paying independent profession (in which I can set my hours). But how with only enough money to get by, more than enough debt already, and already maxed out workwise? The muddier challenge has been accepting the amount of time this is going to take (I'm not well enough to "work it" for quick results) and the another muddy challenge I'm only now facing is truly embracing my new hothouse status. I've been all too aware of the sense of compromise and dependence. But I can no longer withdraw. I must engage the money-making system (and thus have learned much more about it). What are the rewards of engagement that I have lived without and can now look forward to? To many, this will probably seem ridiculous that I have trouble connecting with this but I have been in "do without" mode for a long time--and still am to a large extent--and have not been craving the standard symbols of success. A lot of books about generating wealth seem to assume you want fame and glory along with it or a few mercedes parked in your mansion's coachhouse. They also tend to assume you want to achieve some outrageous career performance, giving examples of Henry Ford or Magic Johnson. There are few examples of quieter, less strenous forms of wealth-building and expression.

Recently ideas for my rich life have been trickling in and I'll elaborate on them in my next blog.

One situation that always comes to mind when I think of money dysfunction in our family was a meager attempt on my part to eat right when I was I was in my later teens. I was eating eggs and sausage for breakfast and my mother told me I couldn't keep it up because it was too expensive for them. That was utterly ridiculous, yet I didn't have access to their checkbook or budget to say, "Yes, you can, see here!" I felt I didn't have the right to argue the case (ie I felt powerless). I should have argued the case because really I think this was a low point for my mother, that it was motivated out of a jealousy of my burgeoning fitness which she needed to have challenged. My reaction was a disgusted: "Fine, I'll do without."

And so maybe I grew up with a sense of powerlessness around the things I wanted and didn't see ways to generate income myself to get the things I wanted. Living away from any commerce prevented me from getting a job (except the occasional babysitting stint) until I had a car. But I don't think the powerlessness is as important as the determination to do without, the withdrawal. It extends to other attitudes such as, "If the only way to be free to enjoy life is to work part time, then I'll live on less. If I want to explore different places then I'll get low level jobs where I'm not expected to stay and move on with less trouble for everyone." The more I was getting in exchange for the less money was hiking and mobility. Yet I set up a false dichotomy. I've been very guilty of a lack of imagination when it comes to money. Perhaps that's the most damaging non-legacy from my upbringing. Though my parents were more sophisticated than I have been, they still were stuck in the "you must be hired to make a living" mentality. They did not explore other means of generating income except a brief period during which my mother propogated plants for sale.

My mother also planted the idealistic seed of "do what you love." But there were conditions. Don't take your writing seriously because it's risky. You'll never be able to support yourself with it. So definitely a double message there that I did not completely break out of.

Still, my continued stuckness I think has to do more with how I'm digesting all that and something(s) I haven't let go of.

But now I have to go to work, so I'll continue this later.

In my attempt to understand my blocks around money, abundance and wealth, I've been thinking about the environment in which I was raised and my personality. One thing that has perplexed me is that if anything we were considered on the wealthy end of the scale in the neighborhood where I grew up. We had a big house and 10 acres of land and my mother created gardens that impressed people even from a distance. But a lot of this appearance of wealth was due to the industriousness of my parents. My mother's gardening and my father's building ability (he built the house with two of his friends--and later a small barn). We were rural middle-middle class. As kids we were aware there was a budget but we also got most of the things we wanted--eventually if not immediately. So I've a bit baffled where I've gotten this poverty mentality.

Much as I have examined my notions around money and my parents' influence in that regard, I haven't looked at the impressions they gave me regarding work and income. My father was a foreman in a GM plant. Though he never complained about work, he also had nothing good to say about it. It took up his time and energy, leaving him rather drained in the evenings. Granted it allowed us to have what we had but it didn't seem to be doing much for my dad. It was a case of work buying him ways to enjoy the time he wasn't at work. My mother was a stay at home mom (or pursuing her education) until we were in our teens. She had her bachelors in psych yet never worked in that field and never made good money, instead working for nonprofits (or retail clerking) jobs. The nonprofit jobs were related to things she enjoyed (music, theater) but the jobs themselves were not particularly enjoyable to her, and like many nonprofit jobs, the compensation did not reflect the quality or quantity of work being provided. So you might say I've never had any sort of model for a happy, fulfilling career that provided a comfortable income without exacting a toll of exhaustion.

Yet these impressions are a product of my own personality. I'm a freedom-loving person. What I saw was the cost of family and stability that may have been worthwhile to my parents but which I didn't want. To me, a owning property meant being tied to a job that required that most of your time be spent doing something you don't want to do. Not a pattern I could embrace yet no other was provided.

Other aspects of my personality were at work as well: stubbornness, a tendency to withdraw, and a faulty self-reliance, all best expressed in the phrase: "Fine, I'll do without then."

I'll have to continue this at a later date--supper time :-)

Inverse paranoia: act as if everyone is part of a plot to enhance your well-being. Paraphrased from a quote by Stan Dale in Jack Canfield's Success Principles.

The utility company has rediscovered a sewer line that runs next to and onto one side of my property, making a turn away from my property at the back corner where there's a manhole. The lot it turns onto is vacant. This line has to have been "lost" by them for a good 15 years because mature trees had grown up, and some died, during that time. They need to clear a path along it. They began clearing without so much as stopping to knock on my door to inform me what was going on. I heard a lot of snapping of trees going on and went to check it out to discover that most of the adjacent lot had been cleared. The damage to my own had been minor by comparison but the dozerman had pushed two bunches of downed trees onto my property. I stopped him to discover what was going on and asked if he would remove the trees from my property. He was very nice but this required that I call higher ups and register a complaint. I did so this morning and in setting out to do the work in the past hour he pulled out more than he needed to. Each time I checked, I was tempted to go down and stop him but held back. It's hard to be delicate with a bulldozer/backhoe. His intentions were good. He was doing what he could to leave the big trees, my main complaint being that he was clearing a lot of brush that he no doubt thought of as a nuisance but which I consider small bird habitat and a visual screen.  The woodsy nature of my back area has taken a serious hit. Some stuff needed to come out anyway and my fiance and I had been slowly taking out some of the dead stuff and excess saplings. The idea was to keep it as natural as possible. Now I have to rethink the situation. A third to a half of my back area (which is off a steep bank and has very obviously been considered a junk area to other land owners) has now been cleared. What there was to hold the soil in place is gone. The shrubs are gone. The woodland habitat is gone. Some of it must remain gone to allow for the easement and the rest I need to decide whether to let go wild in its own time or do some planting to help it along.

Money, as someone already mentioned, but also their health problems and how they are coping with them or healing from them. It seems to me we are more embarrassed about admitting physical weakness or illness than emotional problems because people might think we are trying to make an excuse to be lazy instead of being honest. I believe it's critical for people to be honest about their struggles with health and their attempts to get effective treatment--and the costs incurred--in order for the health care system to change in this country and because then what works would be shared among those with a given condition and doctors can be pressured to provide the effective alternative. (Check out my profile and you'll see I had a battle with Lyme disease. I didn't recover by keeping my mouth shut or by being passive where doctors are concerned. :-) )

I'm experiencing a lovely sense of acceptance lately. My Learning Center may not fly but I don't feel upset about it. I don't even feel upset about the debt that will be left for me to pay off over a couple of years. It still feels right somehow. This is a rare feeling for me, this lack of concern over whether something has served the purpose I intended. And the lack of concern over more debt. Yet, I'm suffused with this feeling that everything will be alright, regardless of whether I need to let go of the space I'm using when the lease is up, regardless of the additional burden of debt. I feel this experience has been worthwhile, though I don't know why. Perhaps because it has put me back in touch with my ability to help people. Perhaps because it has connected me to the community more. Perhaps because I properly judged my risk comfort and that is a form of success in itself. Perhaps because other ideas have cropped up for what I might do to augment my income. Perhaps because I refused to put my life on hold while it taking this risk. Perhaps all of these things. It's mysterious to me and I'm grateful for it.

I have become a goal-oriented person but I wasn't always that way. I'm not sure quite when it developed. I can see evidence of it as a child primarily in relation to school. Otherwise I was a daydreamer. Somewhere along the line I decided I needed to create goals for myself but they were mainly hobby-type goals--wanting to hike a certain trail for instance. As an adult, I believe going back to college at the age of 30 triggered an unhealthy level of goal chasing motivated too much by external standards. I felt I HAD to get high grades so there were no obstacles to getting into grad schools. As it turned out, my high grades made little difference. My desire to get things done has benefitted my employers more than myself for years now, with the exception of my years of lyme disease in which my goal-oriented nature both helped to save me and was a great frustration because the littlest goals (such as putting dishes in the dish washer) would often have to be put off. Now that I'm better, I still have limitations, but I also find that most of my goal-focused nature is in the service of an employer and not aimed at my own joy.

So this acceptance, this letting go of goals or outcomes, may come from at least using my goalishness to my own ends for once, a simple satisfaction in having turned the tables in a healthy way. It also harkens back to childhood periods without worry, of feeling secure, of not feeling that anything has to change. I will continue to engage in marketing activities, etc, but I don't feel the need to STRIVE for anything. I'll continue to work on my yard but I don't think any of it has to happen by a particular date. I feel like I'm headed in the right direction in all endeavors and getting there will in large measure take care of itself so long as I remain steady. Which leaves me one simple goal: remaining steady.  Not the easiest thing for me. One of my methods of self-sabotage is jumping to something new before giving what I'm doing time to bear fruit. But this inner quiet bodes well for sitting still this time, for reconnecting with the naturalist in me who sits still, watches and listens--this time observing my own life and what develops from efforts already put forward.

It occurs to me this morning that maybe what I'm needing is not so much a purpose but  a good fit. Where can I comfortably fit within this place I've settled?  I don't need something as large as a purpose. I don't have the drive for it. But I would like a good fit. I would like to find a way to provide a service to the community that is in harmony with what the people here want or need and that is also in harmony with who I am as a person (talents, experiences, and limitations). I would like that service or services to result in an income stream that will allow me to prosper (to continue to alter my home/property; provide for myself, my animals, my fiance; travel a couple of times a year; afford medical care; save aggressively for retirement).  Exactly what that thing or things will be isn't that important.

I have fantastic ideas for my learning center--but I think too big and don't have the money to accomplish what I'd like and the average person here isn't likely to jump on my vision. So be it. I will be a sometime tutor as one way to make money and will seek other niches. My new scanner provides the option of scanning photographs or slides for others--and my desktop publishing skills allow for the possibility of creating a document out of photographs and family stories. My fiance and I have both wished there was a used bookstore hereabouts--I could start one.  We both also have an interest in landscaping rock in less than huge quantities they're usually sold in, so I could turn a portion of my yard into a "by-the-eaches" rock yard.

I would rather not be so scattered but I don't believe any one of these things will provide an adequate income, at least not initially. And all of these things appeal to some aspect of my character.  I feel in an experimental mode, wondering what will "take" in this community.  I am an oddball here, as is my fiance, so finding a "fit" or niche is going to take some inventiveness. Some things, like the scanning and family memoribilia production, do not have geographic limitations. Others do. Neither of us has much spare change to put toward this experimentation. But I'll move forward by inches and see what happens.

Making no attempt to create this harmony of place/needs/services/me/income is what's intolerable to me. It's going to be a more complicated puzzle than I'd hoped for but it doesn't seem impossible or scary. In fact, there MUST be a way because my life requires it. I just need to watch, listen, experiment.  These are things I'm good at. I'm even good at networking when I have the time. What I need is better marketing skills and/or to find someone who has them--or to just be patient as word of mouth does its work.